Karuma

Main=

Karuma is one of the main characters from the Kishin Douji Zenki series. She is a human woman with green hair, black eyes, a priest robe, a hat and a necklace.

She is the major antagonist of the Karuma ark and has has three loyal servants: Guren, Goura and Anju.

Karuma's personality
Karuma has a cold and calculating personality. While she usually refers to her servants as her "children", she treats them more like dispensable tools. Whenever they disagree with her, she forces her will upon them by brainwashing them, which seems to cause them great pain (as seen with Anju) when she erases their memories.

Karuma loves to talk of herself in third person and looking down on others. Despite her general lack of empathy, Karuma seems to be fond of Guren, who is even willing to sacrifice himself for her. When Guren dies, Karuma uses her powers to revive him to fight off the traitorous Goura. Interestingly Guren is the only one to ever receive this treatment by Karuma, she just forgets that her other servants even existed once they are gone, but she never forgets about Guren.

Karuma's main goal is to spread her Fruits of Possession, so the world becomes a horrible place full of violence, sins and dread. In Episode 27 she even tries to kill Goki's descendants to prevent them from teaming up with the Ennos, so she doesn't fall to the combined powers of Zenki and Goki like 1300 years ago. Karuma secretly fears the strength of the two Demon Gods and tries to kill them, so she never needs to feel threatened again.

Karuma's abilties
Karuma is a powerful magician, who created the Hyouinomi/Fruits of Possession. These are used to make people's desires come true, but at the price of turning them into horrible monsters, the Hyouijuu/Possession Beasts.

How powerful she actually is can be seen when she is returned to her true form. Her human shape is actually a sealed form, like Zenki's Chibi form. Karuma's true self has her appear as a gigantic tree.

Eventhough Karuma's sealed form is far weaker than her real self, she is still very powerful as she is able to erase her victims memories and remote controls her servants from afar. The manga shows that Karuma's influence continues even thousands of years after her death, as her seeds continue to act and destroy the world by feasting on human desires even without Karuma's presence.

Anime
Karuma first appears levitating in her own dimension with her servants Guren, Goura and Anju standing on three rock pillars, where she gives them orders. Karuma is also prone, calling them her "children".

While the anime has Karuma start out in her human form, she later appears as a tree with her face on it. Karuma can also be seen coming out of the tree sometimes (both in the anime and Tenchi Meidou), showing her human body in a merged state with the tree, causing her skin to change to a light purple shade. After her Karuma Beasts and her servants Guren and Goura weaken Shikigami-chou's pentagram seal in the past and the present, Karuma returns to her true form, recovering her full strength and turning all inhabitants of the village into a zombie-like state and wrecking the whole place, leaving only ruins.

Voice actors

 * In the original, Japanese version, Karuma shares her voice with Lulupapa. Both of them are voiced by Yuri Amano.

Furigana

 * The Furigana writing of her name is カルマ (Karuma).
 * Names are not to be translated, but putting カルマ into a translator explains the Karma or Kharma misspellings of her name.
 * Karuma's name has no known Kanji writing

Miscellaneous

 * Karuma's second form from Den Ei Rai Bu never appears in the Anime, as Karuma turns straight into her third form, skipping the second one.
 * Karuma, who is a human/tree woman, should not be mistaken for Karura, who is a completely different character from the same series and a demon man

In General
While Karuma herself never appears in the manga, her seeds are still around to wreak havoc in Shikigami-chou and its surroundings.

Karuma's absence in the manga has been explained in the manga's backstory, as in the manga's version of the series, Karuma has been defeated back in Ozunu's days by Ozunu Enno and his five guardian warriors.

While we get to know three of them (Zenki, Goki and Vasara), the other two are exclusive to some flashbacks in Volume 8 of the manga and never appear anywhere else in the entire series.

Karuma's influence beyond her death gets more clear, when we remember that both Den Ei Rai Bu and the anime have her appear in her true form, a tree. Being a female tree, she bears fruits, the Hyouinomi.

Both in the anime and the manga, Karuma's fruits stay around even after she has withered away and died, thus explaining why they also appear in the manga.

While the anime has Karuma speak (telepathically) through her Hyouinomi, the same can't be said for the manga, where they are more or less autonomous beings, which actually seem to be able to talk to their victims through telepathy, just like Karuma does.

Devsketches


While the devsketches sections of Volume 6 feature her on pages 90 and 182, Karuma herself never appears anywhere else in the manga.

Interestingly, though, her second entry in the larger devsketches section at the end of the volume features some text related to her appearance in the anime and in Den Ei Rai Bu.

Roles (Volume 6)
The text of the devsketches featured at the end of Volume 6 also mention "yaku" or "roles" (in the Kanji and Furigana writings of 役 or やく). These are the roles aren't the roles of the characters themselves, but the voice actors, that played them in the anime.

For Karuma, the text featured in the manga is as follows:

Japanese version: mixed writing (Furigana and Kanji): カルマ役= 天野由梨 Furigana only writing: カルマやく= あまのゆリ Romaji writing: Karuma Yaku= Amano Yuri

Conclusion: Yuri Amano is Karuma's voice actress.

(transliteration by Zenki -- conclusion by Gokimaru)

Ingame
She appears in two of the SNES Kishin Douji Zenki games, Den Ei Rai Bu and Tenchi Meidou. In these games, she is both a major character and the final boss.

Den Ei Rai Bu
Karuma is very special in this game, as she is the only character, besides Goura, who is fought twice in the anime sequence battles.

Karuma's other servant Guren doesn't count here, as he is also fought twice, but his the first battle is an anime sequence battle, while his second battle has him as a jump-and-run boss. This stands in contrast to Goura's and Karuma's battles.

Tenchi Meidou
Tenchi Meidou features Karuma as the final boss of the Karuma ark and the game itself. While Board Game Mode features her floating around in mid-air in her human form and her mugshot depicts her human self, Battle Mode only features her in her tree form.

In Board Game Mode, Karuma is never seen without her servants Guren and Goura. She first appears, when she flees from Zenki, Chiaki and the Cloning Blues Brothers, after the brothers free themselves from her control and choose Chiaki as their new master.

If Anju joins Karuma's forces in the final battle is dependent whether the player (as Miki Souma) fails or succeeds in protecting her in a winter themed stage close to the end of the game. Anju is only abducted and brainwashed if Souma fails, otherwise she will fight alongside him and the other heroes.


 * -|Ingame=

Karuma's first Anime Sequence Battle
Karuma first appears shortly after Zenki has defeated Goura for the second time. She is very quick and aggressive and prefers to send her shadow crows after Zenki.

Karuma's most basic attack has her charge up her palm and shot one or more energy balls at Zenki. They can be avoided by moving out of the way. They can also be blocked, but Zenki will take a slight anmount of damage if he blocks this attack.

Karuma can always shot energy balls. They are not dependent on her special bars, but the anmount of energy balls she shoots at Zenki is dependent on her power bar. The higher Karuma's power, the more energy balls she will shoot, causing slightly more damage.

When Karuma has one or more special bars left, she will use up one of them if she attacks with one of her special attacks or recovers her health.

Her weakest special attack has her shoot a lightning bolt at her opponent. This causes slightly more damage than the strongest version of her energy ball shot.

Her medium strength special attack has Karuma summon shadowy, blue energy crows, which will land on the back of her hand. She will then send them out to fly at her opponent by pointing at the foe and calling out. The crows will fly at the enemy and cause a medium anmount of damage.

Her strong special attack has Karuma shoot a black hole at her enemy, which deals a large anmount of damage and knocks the foe down if it connects. This attack can also be seen in the anime, where she uses it to suck up her foes and absorb them into herself. Ingame she can't do the latter, but this move is still very powerful.

If Karuma has the advantage (green tear) and a full powerbar, she will start laughing, hover in mid-air and summon a gigantic fire dragon, which will fly at her opponent. If it hits, the foe will be knocked down and lose about 2/3 of their health bar.

Just keep in mind that all special attacks can be avoided, blocked or even reflected. If blocked, their damage will be reduced slightly.

If Zenki avoids a medium or stronger special move, he will still survive the attack, even if his health is too low. The same goes for his enemy.

In the first battle against Karuma, her health needs to be reduced to the red bar to progress the game. If this happens Karuma will stop fighting and a cutscene will play, which ends with the beginning of another jump-and-run stage.

Karuma's second Anime Sequence Battle


After defeating the huge, floating Hyouinomi at the end of the game, Karuma is fought again and now needs to be defeated in a proper manner. In this rematch, she has a strange, iceblue coloration and is slightly more aggresive than before.

Otherwise, the fight is exactly the same. Karuma uses the same attacks, only that she now has an additional health bar.

Also keep in mind that if Zenki loses to Karuma in this Anime Sequence Battle, he needs to rematch Hyouinomi before taking on Karuma again.

Just like any other AI opponent, Karuma is likely to sacrifice one special bar to recover her health when she reaches the red/black stage of his health bar.

Trivia

 * While Karuma's first form appears both in the game and the anime, her second form is exclusive to Den Ei Rai Bu. It is unknown if the second form was meant to represent Karuma's tree form or just a stand-alone and entirely game exclusive form.
 * The game also features Karuma's tree form, but Karuma's tree form only appears in a few cutscenes and is never fought in the game's jump-and-run sequences or Anime Sequence Battles.

Tenchi Meidou
Karuma has a very aggressive AI. She draws her cards at a very fast rate and will often use her advantage of starting out with maxed out attack points to oneshot the first character send in to fight her.

This makes her especially tough in multiplayer matches, where the player can only use one character, which can't be powered up before the start of the match.

Karuma's first favorite card is the physical card, which will cause her to deal at least 100 points of damage to her opponent even if she has only one physical card drawn at that time.

Karuma's other favorite is the Om card, which oneshots her foe, if her attack points are maxed out.

The best tactic to use against both her and Vasara (who is equally dangerous, as he can oneshot characters as well) is to raise a character's attack points to their maximum and use the Om card against Karuma or Vasara.

The best character for this is Goki, who has the lowest maximum attack points, but this is still very dangerous as he might be oneshotted by Karuma or Vasara before being able to take action.

So far Karuma and Vasara and are the only characters that are known to be able to oneshot the player straight at the first turn of a Battle Mode match. Karuma because she starts the match with maxed out attack points and Vasara because of his devastating offense.

Karuma, Trees, Oddities and Glitches
Note: Karuma's ingame sprites have been censored to be consistent with Wikimedia's rules.

Karuma's card roulette
Karuma's card roulette is as follows:

Karuma can use the following elemental attack cards: (from the strongest to the weakest)

 * Rank 1 (Karuma's strongest attack card)
 * [[File:Tenchi Meidou light card.png]]
 * Karuma has three light cards in her roulette, but as she only has light and physical cards, this light elemental attack is Karuma's strongest attack in this game.
 * Using three light elemental cards together, causes Karuma to summon an army of Hyouinomi, which then start levitating in mid-air. She will then send them flying at her foe, causing about 190 points of damage.
 * Using four light elemental cards together, causes Karuma to use the Jakobyu (Black Hole Shot) attack, which causes about 400 points of damage.
 * Rank 2 (Karuma's weakest attack card)
 * [[File:Tenchi Meidou physical card.png]]
 * Despite appearing only once in the roulette, the physical attack is Karuma's weakest element.
 * That's because Karuma only has two attack card types and phyical attacks can never be a characters strongest element unless they can only use physical cards and no other attack cards.
 * If Karuma uses one or more physical cards, she will slap her opponent, causing up to 85 points of damage with four cards.

All the values shown above were noted down in a Zenki VS Karuma match and will very likely be different when Karuma battles other characters than Zenki as proved in the notes below which are from a Goki VS Karuma match instead.

Average damage chart

The different stages correspond to the anmount of the same elemental cards used in one turn. Beneath the different stages are the values of damage Karuma deals to Goki. These values do vary greatly against other characters, making it very likely that the characters also have some kind of attack and defense values (besides their elemental resistances) which can't be seen.

Karuma can use the following defensive moves: (from the strongest to the weakest)

 * Rank 1 (Karuma's strongest defense card)
 * [[File:Tenchi Meidou seal card.png]]
 * Karuma's strongest defensive move utilizes the seal card, which allows her to seal an opponent's card, so they can't use it for the corresponding turn.
 * Rank 2 (Karuma's weakest defense cards)
 * [[File:Tenchi Meidou power card.png]] [[File:Tenchi Meidou absorb card.png]]
 * Again, it's rather ironic that Karuma's weakest card is actually her strongest. As Karuma enters into the fight with maxed attack points, she can oneshot her foe on the first turn by using the Om card. The absorb card allows her to refill her attack points by absorbing an attack.

Trivia

 * The timeline from the game very strictly follows the manga, yet it includes characters from the anime in the endgame, leading to encounters like Goki facing off against Karuma, which can never happen in the manga or anime. This is because Karuma is long dead in the manga and the anime has Goki appear after the Karuma ark.
 * Strangely we never see Karuma in her human form as the game only shows her already in her tree state after the events of her taking over Shikigami-chou. It is still unknown which events lead to this happening.
 * This leads to the speculation that it might be that the original authors meant the anime's Karuma ark to happen after the events of the manga, which would lead to Chiaki facing Karuma with a full team of Zenki, Goki, Vasara, Miki Souma and their friends, which would lead to a final battle against Karuma and her servants!
 * Too bad, that Vasara never joins the party ingame, but he would be a member of Chiaki's party in the manga.


 * -|Karuma's forms =

Karuma has four forms. While two of them both appear in the anime and the games, one of them is exclusive to the games and one is exclusive to a single episode of the anime.

Karuma has the following four forms:

Human sorceress -> a tree with a human soul -> a human merged with a tree -> a mantis-like Hyouijuu

Human form (human sorceress)
Karuma's first form depicts her as a human sorceress. She sports green hair and black eyes, wearing a violet priest robe and a purplish hat with fine decorations. She also wears some kind of necklace with a pinkish coloration.

While she's rather powerful, Karuma spends most of her time in her own dimension, cut off from the outer world.

Regardless if its her ingame incarnation or the one of the anime, she usually relies on the services of her servants. While the game only depicts her sending out Goura, Guren, the Hyouijuu and the Hyouinomi, the anime also depicts the brainwashed Anju as an additional servant.

Anime
Karuma's anime incarnation is cold and calculating, often only seeing her servants as tools. The only exception is Guren, who is her most loyal servant. Despite not showing it openly, she seems to have a sweet spot for him, going even as far as reviving him when he dies. A special treatment, which none of her other servants ever see from her.

Den Ei Rai Bu
Karuma's ingame incarnation barely has any character, only being depicted as a spiteful woman that constantly sends out her servants in an attempt to kill Shikigami-chou's inhabitants and holds a deep grudge against Zenki and Chiaki. This incarnation of Karuma often just screams out how much she wants Zenki to die, which Zenki, being Zenki, accordingly answers by taunting and fighting her.

Soul (a tree with a human soul)
Karuma's second form looks the same as her human form, but with a few slight alterations. She now sports iceblue hair and black eyes, wearing a blue priest robe and a blue hat with fine decorations. She also wears some kind of necklace with a blue coloration.

While this form and her "human merged with a tree" one are technically the same, this one is actually only her soul without the body.

While her tree form can be seen in the game's cutscenes, Karuma is encountered as a soul when Zenki and Chiaki enter her body to save the people of Shikigami-chou and their friends.

Her tree form is never fought ingame.

Karuma's soul is slighly stronger than her human form and has a more aggressive personality. This is because despite her increased strength, the heroes entering her tree put pressure onto her, as they could attack her heart and kill her if they advance far enough.

As Zenki is the only one able to harm and kill her, Karuma obviously hates him even more and attacks him more fiercely.

Actually the game makes it that the soul is the equivalent to her heart from her tree form. Once Karuma's soul is defeated, Karuma will wither and die just as if her heart had been destroyed.

Tree (a human merged with a tree)
Her third form is the aformentioned tree. It's Karuma's unsealed form, which unleashes her full power. In this state, Karuma becomes a gigantic tree with a face that has her human form coming out of her "nose/mouth" area. Her human self is now reduced to only wearing her hat and her necklace. She also takes on a purplish skin color.

Her tree possesses, thickly lined, brown bark and fluffy, green leaves. The fruits growing on the tree are Hyouinomi in their sleeping state. After they have grown enough, the fruits will be dropped and shortly after awaken. Then they leave their mother, searching for humans with desires to possess them.

In this state, Karuma is rather static. As usual, she orders her servants around, but as she can't really fight for herself, being a tree after all, she gets stressed out whenever someone enters one of the five zones of Shikigami-chou's pentagram seal, which was made by Ozunu, and tries renew the seals.

Karuma prefers the seals to stay broken, as renewing them would seal her powers again, reverting her to her human form and forcing her to return to her dimension. Therefore, she has sent strong Hyouijuu to defend those special locations against any kind of intruders.

When Zenki faces her and is very certain of his victory, because of his newly claimed Diamond Axe, Karuma basically just shrugs it off, blasting him with a powerful beam, which would kill him if it weren't for Chiaki aiding Zenki with the Bracelet of Protection's shield of holy light and joining her inner strength with his.

Anime
While her anime incarnation stays static and can only defend herself by either ordering her servants to do so or trying to absorb her foes by using the Jakobyu (Black Hole Shot), her ingame incarnations handle things differently.

Den Ei Rai Bu
In Den Ei Rai Bu, this form can only be seen in the cutscenes, where Karuma stays completely static until Zenki and Chiaki enter her, which then causes her to fight them as a soul, using the same abilities as her human form, but possessing more strength. So her tree is still inable to act, but Karuma can defend herself more effectively than her anime incarnation.

Tenchi Meidou
Tenchi Meidou again features an entirely different take on this. As Karuma is met very late ingame, she only appears in her tree form and she can use the same abilties as her anime counterpart, but handles them way more effectively. Karuma's ingame equivalent to the aforementioned beam is Karuma's Om attack, which can and will oneshot Zenki if he doesn't seal Karuma's Om card. This time there's no Chiaki around to aid him, but this battle can still be won with an appropriate strategy.

Vengeful Karuma (a mantis-like Hyouijuu)
Karuma's fourth and final form is exclusive to the anime. Awhile after she has been defeated by Zenki and his friends, Karuma's soul returns.

Her activities increase in Akira's introductionary episode, when she orders her remaining servants to kill the reawakening Goki, before he's able to fully reawaken. Her plans are twarted, when Akira's surrogate father Kyoji dies in Akira's place, while trying to protect the boy, and Kazue escapes with Akira.

While Karuma has been reduced to the state of being a mere Hyouinomi herself and soon reappears in another state, which depicts her as a floating mask with giant worms, she soon does reawaken as a full-fledged monster, becoming a green mantis-like beastwoman with orange eyes and purplish hair, and now tries to kill both Akira and Zenki as the "Vengeful Karuma".

At first it seems like she's going succeed and takes down everyone, excluding Zenki, Akira and Kazue. While Demon God Zenki tries to fight her with the Diamond Axe, he is too weak and struggles against her. When it seems like Zenki is going to lose, Akira cries out and uses the Ultimate Protection Light to protect his new friends and himself.

He manages to blind Karuma, which gives Zenki the edge he needed to win, but faints in the process. This is because the Ultimate Protection Light is Goki's equivalent to Zenki's Rudra, thus being even more tiring if used in his human form.

Karuma is defeated again, but this time she is done for good.

Shortly after this, a new enemy takes her place. The Inugami Roh!

Note: Karuma's ingame sprite, featured in the section Tree (a human merged with a tree, has been censored to be consistent with Wikimedia's rules.


 * -|Gallery (Anime/Tenchi Meidou)=

Karuma's escape and lingering threat
Some scenes from Episode 25 also reappear as flashbacks in Episode 26 when Miki Souma, Kuribayashi, Jukai, Chibi Zenki and Saki can be seen sitting and talking together, starting somewhere around the mark of 05:50 when Saki mentions "the horrors that happened lately".

Tenchi Meidou (Ingame)
Note: Karuma's ingame sprite has been censored to be consistent with Wikimedia's rules.


 * -|Gallery (Den Ei Rai Bu)=

Battle intro
Zenki meets Karuma in her 2nd form. A funny, little dialogue ensues!

(translation by Zenki) Zenki: "Yes, my ingame counterpart does swear in the third line of this dialogue. Of cause, this doesn't excuse anyone on the wiki from swearing, as this is only for the accuracy of translation!"

Trivia

 * In the hidden VS mode it is normally only possible to play as or against Karuma's first form. Her second form is only avialable outside the maingame by using cheats.